Evolving Customer Shopping Experience – The Changing Perspective

Time has been changing with the speed of light. Retail customer experience trends are even more affected by the millennial generation and its evolving customer shopping experience. Here is all what you need to know about up-and-coming trends in the retail industry. In the recent years, retail market has been witnessing the radical changes and putting the revolutionary ideas into action. 

With the changing era of retail industry, consumers are becoming more informed and having more choices unlike the yesteryears. Nowadays the growing options are ever growing and bringing positive changes retail customer experience trends across the world. It’s a free economy and a “Me Too” race where you get more from every penny you spend.

Earlier the retail story was a bit complex. But with more and more retail strategies are introducing in the industry, the retails customer experience is meticulously changing. Retail Gurus are unfolding retail strategies with a holistic approach that can drive success. Today, customers are more informed and have choices than ever before but with the development of new technologies, their expectations have been raised.

The old adage of “Know your customers” is also still as true as it ever was. And with consumer behavior changing rapidly, it become important to stay up-to-date with customer expectations.  Companies are spending a lot money in the research of understanding consumer behavior. But with all these technological advancements, it’s becoming more difficult to know your customers as their behavior is keep changing with changing trends.

Here are trends which help you to understand that how customer shopping experience keep changing in Retail Industry –

Use of Free Trial Before You Buy it

These days consumers have this free trial or free demo. This option allows them to check before buying. Such trends close the gap between online and in-store experiences but also make it easier to coax consumers to buy.

Amazon revealed a new program called Prime Wardrobe that allows people to order clothing from three to 15 items without actually buying it. Amazon will charge them only for the items they keep. Customers can return the items they don’t want in a resalable box with the pre-printed shipping label that the order came in.

Use of Virtual Reality in Shopping

Use of augmented reality devices will make the future of online shopping more personalised. The best example of this latest trend is the debut of “MemoMi’s new “MemoryMirror”, which rolls video, 360-degree viewing.

Increase in Mobile Ecommerce 

E-commerce sites are gaining more popularity and consumers prefer to buy online rather than going out and buy. Brands are also focusing on developing their e commerce mobile application to let users to shop online.

Brands are looking to further enhance their web apps or native apps. People enjoy using e commerce applications because each app has its own unique features which follow an industry standard. There are number of online retailers who are struggling to create quality mobile application on existing customer loyalty. Shopping on mobile device is an entirely a different kind of shopping experience. Many small, big and medium size online retailers are having success when they starting their online retail business with mobile applications.

Power of Analytics in Shopping Experience

There is a big data available for further research to study consumer behavior. Customers create treasure troves of data. Each time they interact with you, the data they generate can unlock valuable insights you can use to create better experiences. To achieve, those gains, it’s crucial to analyze all of the data from your various customer-serving systems in real time. Powerful correlations and intelligence can be used to trigger automated actions that improve engagement and customer satisfaction.

Chatbot Customer Service

You can automate many common queries through the use of chatbots. Almost 50% of consumers prefer customer service interactions via text, chat, or messaging. But, just like with managing a knowledge base or help centre, you’ll need to ensure that there’s an up-to-date library of content feeding the chatbots.

Use of Robots in Retail Service

As technology evolves, the agent of the future will need the knowledge and capabilities to handle more high level conversation across various retail platforms. In 2018, it is predicted that companies invest in providing the proper mean for their agents to handle customer calls and queries.

Aim For Proactive

It can be risky to understand the exact consumer behavior after going through these trends. By combining the trends information with proper customer data, retailers can make the right decision to improve the shopping experience.